Mexico City (AP) – A new testimony from a cooperating witness directly implicates the Mexican military in the disappearance of 43 students in a 2014 incident that continues to haunt the country, according to a newspaper report on Wednesday.
Reforma newspaper said that the witness, probably a member of a gang identified only as “Juan”, claims that the soldiers detained and interrogated some of the students before handing them over to a drug gang.
The students’ bodies were then burned at a local crematorium or dissolved in acidic or caustic solutions and dumped into drains, the witness said. Other bodies were probably pirated and scattered near the city of Taxco.
The disclosure could further embarrass the military, which has recently been hit by allegations that a former defense secretary was paid by a drug gang. It could also imply that most of the student remains could never be found.
The Interior Ministry confirmed that the testimony is part of the case file and said it would file charges against anyone who leaked it. The department did not comment on the accuracy of the newspaper’s testimony version.
However, a person familiar with the case stated that the testimony is new, from the beginning of 2020 and that it is part of the case file.
The witness said that an army captain, who is now facing charges of organized crime in this case, detained some of the students at a local army base and interrogated them, before handing them over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.
Police held another group, and gang members captured others. In all, the witness said that between 70 and 80 people were detained, handed over to the gang and killed, because the Guerreros Unidos gang believed they were criminals from a rival group.
The accusation is part of a series of contradictory testimonies that offered different versions of what happened to students at a college of rural teachers who hijacked buses when they were rounded up by police and handed over to a drug gang.
Over more than six years of investigations, Mexican authorities have found dozens of clandestine graves and 184 bodies, but none of the students have disappeared.
According to the first investigations into the events of September 2014, the police in the city of Iguala handed over the students to the members of the cartel, who were allegedly killed and burned. However, the charred bone fragments were fully suitable with only two students.
Witness Juan reportedly told investigators that bone fragments found around a garbage dump near Iguala were planted by the drug gang to start investigations.
Prosecutors once claimed that students were burned in a huge fire in the dump, a version that independent forensic experts later said was not feasible.
“Juan” said that, in reality, some of the students’ bodies were dissolved in caustic solutions and dumped in drains, while others were pirated and cremated at a local funeral home.
An employee of that funeral home in Iguala, known as “El Angel”, confirmed that he has crematorium facilities. It would have been a bold move that involved almost total control of the Iguala drug gang, as the funeral home is also the base of the office of local medical examiners.
But there have been conflicting testimonies in this case, including some allegedly extracted under torture by investigators in a previous administration.